JIM SUHR, Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Investigators have reopened the Kansas case of a 1999 shooting death for which a man served more than 15 years before his brother confessed in suicide notes that he was the killer.

Kirk Vernon is the chief detective in northeast Kansas’ Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department. He says that while Tom Bledsoe’s November suicide notes helped free Floyd Bledsoe from prison on Dec. 8, authorities are “open to all possibilities that (Tom) may have had assistance” in 14-year-old Camille Arfmann’s death or in hiding her body.

Vernon says there’s no reason to believe Floyd Bledsoe is involved. And he says the inquiry won’t target the county’s former elected prosecutor and sheriff over their original handling of the case.